


Wizardry, Primus, and You

by salticidae



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Crossover, Meta, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 13:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1901463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salticidae/pseuds/salticidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of words on how Transformers canon might interact with the Young Wizards series' universe.  Nothing specific; just general speculation on how Cybertronian wizards might operate, because for some reason I'm physically incapable of NOT crossing things over with YW.  Leans towards IDW, but should be compatible with most continuities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Choice

Death is a weird thing for Cybertronians.  They can be shot, blown up, stabbed, crushed, and diseased, but for some reason death by simple old age is unheard of in all but one of the many continuities out there.  This may or may not put their Choice in a strange position, dependent mostly on whether or not it counts as having rejected death if they can, in fact, die from everything _but_ natural causes.  

Alaalu’s Choice appears to have resulted in similar death-conditions.  The Alaalids have long lifespans, and upon death their souls do not wholly disappear.  Rather, they linger (or inhabit the maze surrounding the planet’s kernel), and are still capable of interacting with the living.  This bears some resemblance to the Allspark (or Well of All Sparks, depending on continuity), although most continuities agree that sparks lost to either of these are, indeed, lost, and that communication with them is impossible.  

The mobiles’ Choice presents another interesting parallel, particularly in regards to naturally-occurring mechanic(?) life forms.  Are they also in possession of indefinite natural life spans?  Surely they can be broken, at least - they may have rejected the Choice outright, but entropy still exists everywhere else, and rejecting entropy probably doesn’t make you invulnerable to all that other stuff the Lone Power can throw at you.  On the other hand, the mobiles’ Choice was the first time that particular situation had ever occurred, which means that, at least in order for the two canons to coexist, Cybertron’s Choice cannot have also been rejected outright.  

Cybertronian mythology generally allows for this, I think, in that Primus and Unicron (both conveniently multiversal entities) are usually seen as siblings.  Occasionally Unicron is replaced by the Fallen or Mortilus, but they serve nearly identical narrative functions.  Anyway, Unicron is always either cast out or defeated by Primus, who may or may not be accompanied by a pantheon of other Primely siblings - all easy marks for the Powers.  Unicron’s continued presence may be a result of Cybertron’s Choice, similar to the Lone Power’s presence on Alaalu, although I hardly think It would have needed to be tricked into keeping Unicron’s shape.  In any case, this may shed some light on Cybertron’s Choice - rather than outright reject it, the Cybertronians may have agreed to some sort of deal in which they probably felt they were pulling one over on the Lone Power.  They were doing no such thing, of course, and It may have allowed them their unusually long life spans in return for the eventual entropic buffet their race would become.  Between the universally-constant civil war and the current state of new Cybertronian life (ie. there isn’t any), there probably wasn’t a whole lot the Lone Power wouldn’t at least pretend to agree to in order to let them get on with murdering themselves for 4 million years.


	2. Cybertron

Cybertron was heavily sevarfrith even before the war, and it continues to be well into the present.  Before the war, secrecy was required due to Functionism’s influence; afterwards, it serves to protect wizards from being exploited as weapons of war against their will (although many undoubtedly participated voluntarily).  Unfortunately, the breadth, length, and brutality of the war drove many wizards away from both sides—those who stayed likely lost their wizardry, although depending on circumstances some may have been able to hang on to it.  Wizards initially allied with the Autobots probably held on to their magic (and/or faction loyalty) for longer than Decepticon-allied wizards, many of whom jumped ship when Megatron started doing the world-conquering thing.  (Within IDW canon, any remaining wizards (on both sides) likely packed up and left after the period of time during which Megatron and Optimus manipulated the war from inside their omniglobes.)  Wizards emerging after this point in time are neutrals, either from the beginning or having deserted prior to gaining wizardry.

The only exceptions may be those canon characters whom wizardry actually suits.  Due to the nature of Transformers canon, these characters are few and far between, but Rung, Skyfire/Jetfire, Windblade, and Nautica seem particularly good candidates.

The wizardly population on Cybertron was never particularly dense—it was lower (proportionally) than Earth’s even at the peak of wizardly activity—but given recent events the number remaining has only decreased.  Of course, this is true for the general population as well, but the combined effects of war-related death and the absence of new spark growth have taken their toll particularly hard on the wizardly population.  Some wizards find it incredibly hard to continue their work under the knowledge that their race is slowly dying.  

Given the large proportion of wizards that became neutrals, many of them now live and operate off-world.  Their efforts have become more localized, focusing primarily on the community of bots that they’ve taken up residence with, although most of them still maintain contact with the wizards planetside, sending useful information along as they find it.  Many native Cybertronian creatures were also rafted along with these wizards.

The wizards that remained on Cybertron are generally dedicated to its continued maintenance.  In most continuities, Cybertron is either dead, dying, or stagnant, and so holding it together takes the greatest priority.  Active regeneration is usually beyond their means, but keeping the planet’s bedrock stable, for example, is no less important than working to revive dormant hot spots.  A lot of this maintenance may not even be magical in nature, particularly if it involves clearing rubble or reinforcing structures both natural and cybertronian-made.  Even work that doesn’t directly focus on Cybertron itself can be helpful; a few ambitious wizards may be investigating ways to help resolve the war itself, and all the lingering sentiments that will inevitably follow (which would operate similarly to Nita’s revision of the Lone One’s description in SYWTBAW—allowing for positive change to occur naturally).  This is not necessarily _discouraged_ by Cybertron’s remaining Advisories, but the majority opinion is that such work should take a backseat to ensuring Cybertron’s stability (unless the Book of Night With Moon suddenly drops into their laps or something).  

Communication is highly valued among Cybertronian wizards, particularly because they don’t tend to be physically around each other often, given how few of them are left and how widespread they are, even just the ones on Cybertron.  Not that gating isn’t possible, but they like to save the energy for other things unless necessary.  Communication via manual or even the general datanet serves well enough for most purposes.  They’re also fairly insular, as wizards go.  This is mostly because of the whole “dying planet” thing, so most people understand, but it’s still unusual (though not unheard of) to see a Cybertronian wizard out on errantry.  Generally if a Cybertronian wizard’s errantry takes them off-planet, there’ll be something useful for them to bring back to Cybertron by the end of it, from physical resources to information.  By the same token, it’s rare for a non-Cybertronian wizard to be sent to Cybertron unless the Powers feel they have some new insight or resource that could really be useful.  The Powers understand, too.


	3. Logistics

As Cybertronians’ brains are generally equivalent to superadvanced living computers, the majority of their wizards store their Manuals within their own personal memory banks as data.  This functions similarly to the electronic Manuals of Earth wizards (eg. Spot), although without the strange physical upgrades, which are unnecessary here.  A few wizards use a system more like the Irish wizards or cats of Earth; their knowledge of wizardry is housed directly in their core processor and not in any of their more typical memory storage areas.  This is generally described as getting wizardry “straight from the Allspark” (or Well of All Sparks), which may also continue to “whisper” spells and other useful information into the wizard’s processor throughout their life.  This is common among Cybertronian wizards with flight-capable alt modes, although they are by no means the only ones to acquire wizardry in this way.

Wizards that acquire their manual through external means do so in a way very similar to most Earth wizards.  They happen upon an interesting file while browsing the datanet, or an unusual summary catches their eye while purchasing books, and from there the process is generally as described in Young Wizards canon.

The latency period for Cybertronian wizards is a bit of a tricky thing: they have potentially indefinite lifespans, yet they don’t go through an “adolescent” period the way organic species do.  From all canon indications (except Bayverse), Cybertronians are considered “adults” almost immediately after “birth”—Tailgate had only been alive for two weeks before his story started, and in that time he was already functionally on par with bots who had been alive for far longer, and had even been assigned a job.  

Fortunately, maturity and adult functionality are not actually the same thing, so measuring latency by a Cybertronian’s maturation seems a sensible option.  Interestingly, operating under this assumption this means that there is no _set_ latency period (as in humans); instead, it is the period during which a given Cybertronian goes through the greatest increase in maturity, which may be as early as 10 years old or as late as 1 million.

A Cybertronian’s kernel, contrary to popular belief, is not actually their spark.  It may be located there, especially in newly-ignited sparks, but as a wizardly construct it cannot, by nature, actually be the spark itself (otherwise non-wizards wouldn’t be able to see sparks).

> **  
> IDW Specific:** Wizards previously allied with the Decepticons have many-layered diversion, anti-detection, and protection spells applied and re-applied to themselves as necessary.  The uppermost ones are simply for deflecting attention away from the wizard in question, while the deepest ones tend to be powerful shields or translocation spells.  As deserters (and not, say, active traitors), they don’t tend to be very high up on The List, but the DJD is nothing if not thorough, and no one really wants to take any chances.


End file.
